An Improper Proposal (28 page)

She gasped as his large, knowing hands closed over her breasts. She had seen what those hands were capable of, knew the strength that lay coiled just beneath those callused fingertips. It amazed her anew that his touch could be so infinitely gentle … especially when she was equally aware, from the fire in his kiss, of how long he must have been waiting for this moment. Wasn’t that obvious in his uneven breathing, the heavy drumming of his heart? That he could keep his lust in cheek and proceed with such slow patience, mindful that this was her first time, only strengthened her conviction that this man was the only one for her.

When his palms grazed her sensitive nipples, however, she forgot all about her admiration of his restraint. Instead, her body took over. Her breasts seemed to swell beneath his fingers, filling his palms. At the same time, her legs, still astride him, parted even further, until she felt the hard length of his erection prodding against her very core. The sensation, she knew, should have alarmed her, as it would have any properly brought-up British girl. But as yesterday had proved, despite Georgiana’s best efforts, Payton was far from proper. As soon as she felt him pressing so insistently against her, her hips began to move in a manner that was as shameless as it was instinctive.

Below her, Drake let out a wordless sound that seemed to Payton to be a groan of pain. Thinking she’d injured him, somehow, she froze … then gasped when, far from hurting, Drake showed his appreciation for her enthusiasm by lifting his head to seize one of her straining nipples in his hot, wet mouth. Now Payton knew what that groan had been about. Not pain. Pleasure. Ripples of it coursed through her body as he suckled on first one, then the other firm, tip-tilted breast.

But while his mouth was raising her to dizzying new heights of arousal above her waist, his fingers were launching a new offensive below it. Without Payton being aware that he’d done so, Drake had unbuttoned the front of her trousers. She was completely exposed to him, though she didn’t realize it until his fingers brushed against the silky hair between her thighs. At that light, almost inquisitive touch, Payton’s eyelids, which had become heavy with desire, flew open. She was shocked by the sight the moonlight threw into starling clarity, that of his large, tanned fingers parting the soft brown tuft at her center. Never mind that those fingers were doing things to her that she’d never imagined in a million years she’d enjoy—stroking her, petting her, filling her. It was wrong, it had to be wrong, what he was doing …

Which would explain why she liked it so much.

No sooner had Payton opened her eyes than she closed them again, lost in the pleasurable sensations he was evoking with his clever, dexterous fingers. She could stop him now, she knew, before it was too late. Seize his wrist and pull his hand away. It was what Georgiana would want her to do.

But instead of closing her fingers around his arm, she brought them against the iron-hard bulge she could feel straining against her, at the front of his trousers. Would he, she couldn’t help wondering, let her touch him this time, the way he was touching her? Did he yearn for her touch, the way she, for so very, very long, had yearned for his?

Payton’s question was answered at once. Even though she only brushed the tip of his penis with the lightest of touches, Drake reacted as swiftly as if that touch had branded him. Wrenching his lips from her nipple, he brought his mouth to hers in a kiss that was fiercely possessive. Then, before she was really aware of what was happening, he shifted, and suddenly, what had been covered just seconds before in material was free, singeing the smooth skin of her inner thighs.

Free, and somewhat alarming in size.

Drake looked up at her. He was breathing as heavily as if he’d just run a mile, his golden chest rising and failing beneath her, and yet the words he managed to rasp out made it clear that his only concern, at that moment, was for her: “I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.

She didn’t know that the moonlight, which had cast him in complete shadow, had revealed to him a sudden panic in her eyes. She didn’t know that the coarseness of his new beard had stained her chin and neck with a permanent blush. She didn’t know, as he did, that she was slick with wanting him, wetter than any woman he’d ever been with. All she knew was that, in spite of his own obvious need, his only thoughts had been for her welfare. That, as much as the gentle restraint he’d shown in his handling of her, caused a wave of love for him to wash over her, as powerful as any lust she might have felt for him in the past.

“I know,” she told him, suddenly shy. She could tell by his expression that she hadn’t reassured him, and she was casting about in her mind for some way to do so when, once again, her body took over—and answered him for her. Before she was even really aware she was doing so, she’d moved her hips slightly, just enough so that the tip of his hard shaft nudged the moist opening of her core. Below her, Drake looked momentarily startled, and instinctively, he froze, his eyes so hidden in shadow that they no longer looked silver, but—she noticed in some distant part of her brain—black, like the sea before a storm.

And then Payton moved again, taking in a little more of him, curious to see how much of him she could hold. Not much, she imagined. He was a very large man, and she was an abnormally small woman …

His control broke. All of that restraint she’d so admired was gone in less time that it took for her heart to beat once. Suddenly, he plunged into her, burying himself into that tight, wet heat, where he’d longed to be for what seemed like an eternity …

Payton’s choice of expletives was graphic as well as colorful, but unfortunately its originality was lost on Drake, who was so concerned for her well-being that, after delivering that first thrust, he immediately came back to himself, and asked, not very coherently, “Are you all right?”

But Payton had found that, after the initial burst of very sharp pain, what followed, while still not exactly comfortable, could not necessarily be construed as painful. Having braced her hands defensively against Drake’s chest and locked her hips to prohibit him from moving any further, she began to suspect that this sensation was equivalent to the one she’d felt the day before … only better.

“Payton?” Drake asked, sounding more coherent, and a good deal less patient. His chains rattled as he seized her by the arms, to shake her a little. “Payton? Are you all right?”

She shushed him and gave a small, experimental undulation with her hips. Drake, dropping his head back down against the floor, moaned. But that wasn’t what interested her just then. What was interesting, she found, was that she didn’t feel any pain anymore. All she felt was an urgent pull, a longing to press herself as closely to him as she possibly could.

And soon that longing turned into an all-out necessity. Moving her hips again, she clung to him, aware, but only dimly, that he was saying things to her. She had no idea what they were. At one point, as she moved against him, she was quite certain he’d said he loved her.

Then he was moving with her, his big hands gripping her bottom, not so much guiding her as attempting to stay with her …

And then, as if by a riptide, she was caught, sucked under, a violent and lovely wave of delight breaking over her, shaking her from the scalp of her head to the soles of her feet. For a few moments, she wasn’t at sea at all, wasn’t anywhere near it. She was between the sea and the sky, shimmering there, like late afternoon sunlight. She cried out his name, because it seemed to her that she oughtn’t go flying off like this without him …

And then, suddenly, she was back within herself, exhausted and panting, clinging to Drake’s naked chest. Only he hadn’t noticed, because he was still out there, where she had just been. She could tell by the expression on his face, his eyes tightly closed, his mouth clenched as if in pain. And she could tell by the violence with which he was plunging himself into her, harder and harder, until she was quite certain he was going to split her in half … and she didn’t even care.

Then, with a final savage thrust, he teetered over the edge, and all the lines left his face, making him look years younger, handsomer than she’d ever seen him, causing her to fall in love with him all over again.

Then he was still, as limp as she’d gone seconds before, spent. They lay like that in the gloom of his cell, still joined together, panting and damp.

Then Drake lifted his head from where he’d dropped it against the floor, and, smoothing her tumbled curls away from her face, asked, a little diffidently, “Are you all right? Did I … I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Payton considered the question. She was just the tiniest bit dismayed to find that she was all right. She was better than all right, as a matter of fact. She’d never felt quite so good in all her life.

But she knew that wasn’t how she was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be in horrible pain, bleeding profusely from the loss of her maidenhead. Only Payton suspected she’d never had a maidenhead, because she’d certainly felt only the slightest pain when Drake entered her—startling, yes, but very brief in duration. She ought to have felt more discomfort, aside from her initial fear that he wouldn’t fit. What kind of lady lost her virginity and didn’t experience tremendous amounts of pain?

Well, the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon, apparently. More proof that as a lady, she was a miserable failure. She’d no doubt broken her maidenhead a thousand times over, inserting the sea sponges Mei-Ling had taught her to use during her menses. How very anticlimactic.

“I’m fine,” she sighed sadly.

He stared up at her, concerned. “You don’t sound it.”

“I just thought … well, I thought there’d be more blood.”

“Oh,” he said, looking immensely relieved—but whether because there hadn’t been any blood at all, or because he knew now that he’d succeeded in making her climax, she wasn’t certain. “You needn’t sound so disappointed. I didn’t want to hurt you, you know.”

“I know,” Payton said. “But if we lived in less civilized times, you’d be required to produce a sheet with my virgin blood spilled upon it, to prove to your family that I was pure before I came to your bed.”

“I hardly think,” Drake said, a bit dryly, “that in the unlikely event we live through this, anyone in my family—particularly my grandmother—is going to require any proof of your virginity, Payton.”

“Nevertheless, it’s a bit of a letdown. A girl only loses her virginity once, and—”

“And she’d like it to be as dramatic as possible?”

“Well, a little blood would have been nice.”

Drake could not help but feel a cad. He had robbed her of something he hadn’t any right to whatsoever. What’s more, he had done it knowing full well it was wrong. He had sworn to himself, that should he ever be fortunate enough to make love to Payton Dixon, it would be in a bed—preferably their marriage bed. And, failing that, at the very least he’d hoped to be in control enough of himself not to frighten her.

And while he believed that she had derived some pleasure from their lovemaking, he could not help but berate himself for having, essentially, rutted upon her, just as he’d sworn to himself he would not do. Even if she had been on top …

But how was he supposed to have stopped himself? Never had he been with a woman who took every bit as readily as she gave. And that moment when the trepidation in her hazel eyes had turned to wonder—that had been his undoing. He hadn’t been able to stop himself after that—especially after he’d plunged into her, and found that between Payton Dixon’s legs lay paradise, the tightest, warmest place imaginable.

He ought to have been able to control himself. It wasn’t as if he was some callow youth, completely without experience in the bedroom. But he’d taken her like a wild thing, without a hint of gentleness—and her a virgin, no less.

Never mind that she seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed herself, that her only regret—or the only one she’d admit to—was that she’d had no maidenhead to burst. He’d used her abominably. Somehow, he had to make it up to her.

He reached up to cup her cheeks with his hands. “Would it help,” he asked, “if I said that I loved you?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Do you?”

One of those tawny eyebrows rose. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“Well, only because I’ve been loving you for years and years, and I never thought you’d noticed.”

“I noticed,” he assured her. “It took me a while, but I noticed.”

She smiled beatifically, and moved to slip her arms around his neck. But whatever she had been about to say was forever lost when a key scraped in the lock behind them.

In a flash, it seemed, Payton was away from him and on her feet, simultaneously buttoning up her vest and trousers and urging him to do up his, an order be lost no time obeying.

The door swung open, and Drake’s jailer raised a candle and peered in at them. “’Ill,” he said, and hiccupped.

“Right here.” Payton sauntered nonchalantly into the puddle of light cast by the guttering candle. “What, Tito?”

“Cook wants ye.” Tito was not standing very steadily on his feet. The man was only half-conscious, clearly three sheets to the wind. The nearly empty bottle clutched in one of his massive fists revealed why. “’E’s lockin’ up the galley for the night.”

“Right.” Payton gave her trousers a hitch. Drake, watching from the floor, realized with a start that the gesture was an imitation of her brother Ross, who frequently tugged at his breeches in such a fashion. “Let’s go, then.”

Tito turned his porcine gaze on Drake. “’E give you any trouble, then?” he asked, without much genuine interest.

“That one? Naw. Not ’im.”

Tito nodded. “Good.”

Then without so much as another glance in Drake’s direction Tito turned to go. From the darkness of the giant’s shadow, Payton gave Drake one last, fleeting glance. Then the heavy door slammed shut behind them both, leaving him alone once again. The only evidence, he realized, that Payton had ever been there at all was the food on the floor and a slightly damp spot on the front of his breeches.

And a hole, which he was convinced was burning through his heart.